Staff: Admin

Are shown to have these badass, super intellogent detectives that can solve any crime, and that no one ever gets away with anything, ever, as a sort of crime deterrent in the real world?

No, these shows are not a public service, they are all about $$$. No one wants to watch a show where a detective spends 30 minutes walking around and doing paper work only to not have a clue as to what happened.

Are shown to have these badass, super intellogent detectives that can solve any crime, and that no one ever gets away with anything, ever, as a sort of crime deterrent in the real world?

No. Criminals know that they can get away with a lot and that the cops don't have the resources to pursue or resolve every crime.

For example, when you see a cop show in which the crime lab is processing tons of DNA evidence, you don't get a realistic view of the time involved, or the cost of the testing. Police departments don't have bottomless pockets to pay for that stuff. When the public is alert and watching (such as the Long Island serial killer case) politicians will loosen the purse-strings, but in low-profile cases the police have limited resources.

Are shown to have these badass, super intellogent detectives that can solve any crime, and that no one ever gets away with anything, ever, as a sort of crime deterrent in the real world?

Yes. I think it's a deliberate meme put out there intended to discourage people from thinking they could get away with it.

Who might be on top of the TV industry pressuring them to do this? It's probably a policy they adopted due to the public uproar that arises whenever something that seems to glorify criminality is aired. In other words, it's deliberately and consistently done in order to avoid being accused of encouraging criminality.

Studies of the death penalty have shown it is at best a very modest deterrent with some 80% of all homicides estimated to be crimes of passion committed by friends and relatives in the heat of the moment. Even so half of all homicides are never solved.

Such shows remind me of religious groups that rant and rave about things like abortion and AIDS when the highest incidents of such things is in the Bible Belt. Sherlock Holmes busting one complex white collar crime after another is the stuff of comic books when in reality white collar is seldom punished or merely receives a slap on the wrist. Denial isn't a river in Egypt and it does not promote an effective deterrent.

There was a documentary in the UK recently that showed a number of recent cases where the criminals had copied techniques off of CSI and the like to try and get away with it. They bought all the right chemicals and kit and cleaned everything to remove their DNA, choose appropriate alibis and even went some of the way to cut up a body in sterile bags.

They were eventually caught because A) they had the right idea but didn't follow it through perfectly, some DNA was found and B) there was evidence of what they bought.